On the fence about GW2 PvP.

Hi,

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everyone is healing up all the time.
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.

this state is where a player can fight for his life for a second chance to get back up. it takes skills and teamwork to down a player in pvp. i spent 8 minutes with a warrior 1 on 1 on the 2nd stress test. especially in high end pvp you will unlikely finish a 1 on 1 very quickly. whole point of the arena pvp is teamwork.

in the downed state, you either finish them off with F, or finish off their downed state health with your normal attack. they can only do a set of 4 moves in downed state. 1: basic attack , 2: knock down 3: class special skill 4: heal self.

If you played in the hot join pvp (8v8) then yes, it can get a bit zergy if all the ppl are sticking togheter just fighting instead of going for objectives. But in 5v5 sPvP it is alot better and thats what the game is balanced after. In 1 on 1 it will fill slower than other games because there is no dedicated healers anymore and everyone has self healing and support and dodging. However you should be able to end up killing the other unless both of you chose a super defensive build. The downed state adds to the PvP I think, it is a nice mechanic however I think it needs a bit of tweeking on the abilities available in the down state, Or maybe the finishing move should do some damage over time as well (say 30-50% of the HP bar over the cast) that way if you got interupted you could switch to killing with damage instead of finishing move.

Playing PvE kinda eases you into the downed state and res mechanic:
If your health bar reaches 0 hp you go into the downed state, your hp gets set to 50% and you get 4 skills: s1 is dealing damage, s2 is disrupting stomping, s3 is class specific, s4 is a heal.
If your health bar reaches 100% (through your self heal or someone ressing you) you live again and if an enemy gets stomped while you damage them you rally and live again also.
If an enemy manages to get a stomp off (through the F key) you are dead, it will take a much longer time to res you and after a time you will get your chance to respawn.

This mechanic adds another tactical layer to the gameplay. Downed players are still a threat to you. For example if you are in an 1v2 and down one player you have to decide whether it's worth it to stomp the player or maybe LoS him. If you just damage the downed player from time to time, you interrupt his heal and can slowly bleed him out. This might even be better then straight up stomping him, since he can not respawn and you took him out of the game for 30s or 1min.

edit: How can you say that classes are clearly op after playing for maybe 8h?

I'm not going to counter your points, I'm just going to give you my own opinion on the same issue of your points. Don't take this the wrong way.

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
As opposed to being burst down in seconds? Personally, I'm glad that characters have some survivability, but even then a player with not a lot of toughness will go down fairly quickly even if they have a lot of vitality, and a good condition build can stamp out a player with no condition removal, and a lot of toughness, because conditions ignore toughness. Perhaps it was the class you used? Did you attempt to create your own build, or did you use the default the game gives you?

- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
You'll have to elaborate. Each class can be built so many ways, it's way to broad to just say one class is OP.

- Everything feels messy and out of place.
Out of place? In what way? Elaborate more.

- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
It's not for me. If you're targeting them you can see their health bar go down and you see numbers pop up. Players flash when hit, and your attacks actually contact the player... I don't know how you could make it any clearer without popping a giant sign in front of your screen saying "You're hitting him!"

Unless you're refering to precise damage, then you just have to keep playing until you learn the value of the numbers. "Is 2000 damage a lot for this ability?" "Is 15000 a lot of health?", you learn these things as you play.

- Everyone is healing up all the time.
Heal CD is about 20 seconds or more, and it doesn't heal a player to max. I have not experienced an issue with this.

- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
When you go into downed state, the enemy gets a new health bar that is dark red, when that runs out or they are finished, they actually die. Now if it was actually a bright red bar going from half to the player going in downed state, I'd have to say that's lag, I never experienced this.

- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
Like I said, usually a good idea to turn away from the zerg and go cap a point. Kills aren't worth enough to chase. Keep in mind that capping a point doesn't go faster with more players on the point, if there is any kind of presence in the cap zone neither will get it, even if one side is outnumbered 1 to 5. There are advantages to spreading out, as there are for sticking together, but I feel that zerging has a much steeper cost to the team. It kind of ruins your overall map presence.

- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.
Didn't you make this point already?

"Questions are for those seeking answers. Those who have answers are those who have asked questions." -Mike R. (Malthurius)

The downed state needs some tuning, class balance ofc as well. The rest is what will distinguish good players from bad. I remember in GW1 if you were new at pvp you had no idea what's going on / why are you constantly out of energy, interrupted, knocked down, do no damage ...

Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air... I know them all.
~Euron "Crow's Eye" Greyjoy

WAY too early to call anything OP, ESPECIALLY from someone that only got to play stress tests (with lag)

like what? damage numbers not enough?

No they don't...

New game, cant expect to play under 8hrs and know what the animations are for everything.

I wouldn't say 156 fps is lag. the testers played very well for me, and many people too.

If you aren't blind, you can clearly see the three professions I mentioned are clearly OP. I was clearing up the field with Ele with ease, the moment I had low half.. Switch to water and get back up. And the time they got my health down again, my heals were back off CD, and I was destroying them with ease switching to fire and ele. I played Guardian, same thing, no one could kill me, but I was destroying everything in my path too. Warrior was insane too, I died a few more times, but it was storming through player's like they were butter.

fps =/= lag. Lag as in latency, ALOT of ppl were affected with lag, including myself.

You played 3 classes and call them OP.... lol maybe you should play the other ones too, then you might call them OP too to end up saying they are ALL OP... The game is NEW and EVERYONE is a noob, some less than others. No one is a pro at GW2 yet... it just doesnt happen like that.

Is this a bad thing? Personally I am sick of the quick deaths/kills in most other MMOs. I like the longer, more strategic battles. I had an excellent 1v1 contest vs. a ranger in BW3 in one of the WvW zones. The fight lasted close to 10mins and took us from one of the supply camps, across a third of the zone and ended in a river beneath a bridge when I finally took him down. It was a fun, enjoyable battle where both of us had the upper hand for a time.

- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.

This is debatable. I personally found the thief to be very powerful 1v1, while the Elementalist was better in laying down some mass AoE damage with the staff. I will be playing a Mesmer at launch however.

- Everyone is healing up all the time.

Yes that is because everyone has a heal. It's on a timer though and in combat it only heals for 25% of your life I believe (seems about that much) while out of combat it is closer to 50%.

- People go into down state at half health... what? :S

No they don't. They go into the downed state at 0 life, but then they are given a big boost of temporary life to survive the incoming damage and try and recover. This can be overcome by finishing them off, preferably with a cow, although you can nuke them down as an alternative but that takes some time.

- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.

Not sure what you mean by these comments or what you are looking for to show solid damage? Do you mean you can't cast one ability and see 50% of someone's life disappear?

I wouldn't say 156 fps is lag. the testers played very well for me, and many people too.

If you aren't blind, you can clearly see the three professions I mentioned are clearly OP. I was clearing up the field with Ele with ease, the moment I had low half.. Switch to water and get back up. And the time they got my health down again, my heals were back off CD, and I was destroying them with ease switching to fire and ele. I played Guardian, same thing, no one could kill me, but I was destroying everything in my path too. Warrior was insane too, I died a few more times, but it was storming through player's like they were butter.

Maybe I'm pro then? Or are they OP?

You choose one.

have you tried the immortal Necromancer or the illusion dueslist build of Mesmer? 8 hours of gameplay is not enough and you have not tried other classes as of yet.

I actually enjoyed the PVP. Granted, all I did was WvWvW PVP, but I enjoyed it. The only thing I did not like is that you can't see the name or class of your enemy, it felt to me like I was fighting "smart" NPCs. I know why they chose to not show the name/class, to make it more authentic, but I don't like it. I'm sure I'll get use to it though, the rest of the PVP was way to much fun to get stuck on that.

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
It's supposed to be slow killing players. Multiple reasons, one is that 1v1 fights feel more challenging and require skill. Also, the entire game is to promote teamwork. If you move as a team, use the call out command, then people die actually really fast.

- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
Warrior, Ele, and Guardian are reportedly "finished and polished" according to a lot of the beta players who have played multiple classes. Somewhere I read that Devs say they still are not happy with where Necros and Theifs are at currently. I haven't heard or read anything about Mesmer or Engineer. Remember it's beta now, and when it becomes live they are going to continue to tweak numbers to get things right. They want all classes to be even, and they want the weapons and stuff to make it so that each class has more uniqueness to it. That takes time, testing, tweaking, and polishing.

- Everything feels messy and out of place.
At first glance, I would agree with you. It feels chaotic, especially in WvWvW environment. A lot has to do with, in my opinion, that its new. People don't know what to do. Me and my buddy were talking about WvWvW and comparing it to Alteric Valley and running to the field of strife and just farming the middle spot for 12+ hours. There was an objective at AV, but it was easier and more honor to just farm kills. In Rift, on the Conquest map, it took a month or so until players started learning to control the middle and one other point to win, it took people a month to figure out to grab the flag and defend it properly in the first pvp map (I don't remember the name now), it was just random killing in the middle before that. Anyway, the point is, people have to get comfortable with their characters and their map before it feels less messy and out of place.

- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
It is. Lots of reasons to feel this way, between not having dps meters/parsers, to the chaoticness of it all. But, again, that is the point in these "war scenarios". You, as an individual do not matter. You are a part of the army, and the army matters. Your army is trying to take over the stronghold, break down the gate, defend your base. Are you completing the objective as a team? Yes? Then your doing your job. Don't be happy there and be carried along, but know that if your army is winning and your doing the best you currently can do, then your doing enough solid damage to enemy players.

- Everyone is healing up all the time.
Yup. That's what happens when you lose the trinity system. Losing the trinity system has its pro's and con's. Some are going to love it, some are going to hate it. At the end of the day though, it's the games goal.

- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
It kind of feels that way, and it's not quite that extreme, but they do it so that you'll use your "execute" f command, or work as a team to quickly kill the enemy. It sucks when your killing your enemy, but it never feels long enough when your the one trying to fight for your life. Just a game mechanic you'll have to get use to.

- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
This is the same thing as "everything is to messy" and "can not see how much damage you do to a player" combined into one question. See above.

- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.
Like everything else, this will become better as you play more. It's a new MMO, which means new spell effects and armor models etc. The game is designed to recognize what to do based off spell and movement animation, so believe me, you'll get use to identifying certain spells soon enough, especially the ones that do solid damage.

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everyone is healing up all the time.
- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.

Don't get butt hurt tho, just my opinion. How do you feel about PvP?

Well, in my opinion:

1 - Killing a player in less than 10 seconds is kinda boring, i like to struggle and play the game than get someone by surprise and GG before he has a chance to retaliate. That said, there still some nasty builds that kill really quick in gw2, but once you learn how to deal with the burst, you will be feeding on delicious tears.

2 - Warrior is one of the insane bursts, takes practice to kill, but once you get, easy to deal, blind helped me a lot. Support mage was my hard counter, so i thought it was normal? Guardians were just a 4 year children, boons to conditions (played a necro most of the time).

3 - Same feeling in the first beta, so much particle effects in that time that i was happy for not being epileptical. Got used really quick in the BWE2.

4 & 5 - Dunno really what to say here, for me was really obvious to pressure a player for him to use his healing ability and defensive CDs, then burst for the kill.

6 - Nono, once your life gets depleted you enter in downed state, where you get a new half filled bar to try to work around.

7 & 8 - I was more focused in helping and give support than "how much damage i am doing now" but a good way for you to know without the zerg around to mess with your judgement is to go into the training golens in the mists, and beat them around

Also, i gave up in pvp in these 2 days of stress test, lag and pvp in gw2 does some really strange things, hope i have helped in some way.

@Vsml: I owned qutie a few people myself, but got owned by other professions as well - Mesmer, Engi, Thief, Ranger... it all hurt. All classes can be "bursty" and give you "WTF?!". Personally I hated facing Mesmers the most.
Few good players actually avoided my "sick" burst when I was playing last 2 stress tests in sPvP. Its avoidable and thats whats really awesome in this game.

You really gotta play more and learn more bout classes before can call "OMG OP!". At times you met total noobs who you 1v2 easly, at times players who gave you headache while fighting 1v1.

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
I don't think it does and if it does it's highly dependent on the build and the opponent. You generally can't really burst people down, which I kinda like, since random kills and unexpected deaths are really annoying to me. Having longer fights in general is kinda good, since it encourages skill and teamwork, as well as giving people to opportunity to retreat. Also in sPvP killing people is overrated. - Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
Stating it like that is kinda annoying, since you don't give specific examples on why or how they are overpowered. What I do know is that when people are calling certain professions overpowered, they mostly refer to certain builds being really good at an obvious factor. For instance, when people call Warriors too strong, it's mostly about a burst-damage build that does high damage upfront, but is brittle and loses steam fast. With Guardians, people often talk about them being hard to kill, but that's only in builds dedicated to longevity and they don't do as much damage (and are pretty static). - Everything feels messy and out of place.
Just as with your previous comment, elaboration is needed. It's okay to state when something feels off, but this is too vague to facilitate discussion. - It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
You can see the numbers of the damage you're doing and you can see the enemy's healthbar. If it's going down fast, you're doing solid damage. I will say that it would be nice to see the enemies health as a numeric value. - Everyone is healing up all the time.
This is by design and not as frequent as you're making it sound. With decent damage/or control, you can prevent the impact of self-heals a lot. - People go into down state at half health... what? :S
This is either a bug, or you're mistaken. People enter the downed state when they lose all their health. - Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
First it's too slow, now it's too fast. First of all, zerg-fights are to be avoided for strategical purposes. But if you want to do them anyway, it's not that hard to understand. If you're not dying, and the enemy is, or retreating you're doing it right. I doubt specific damage numbers would help to make things clearer in this case. Maybe even make things harder to understand.

Originally Posted by Malthurius

In the case of zerg fights, it's usually better to just turn the other way and cap a point instead I found. Especially in random sPvP matches.

Yeah, my best games (both in terms of points and in terms of fun) were running from base to base capping and/or defending and harassing players between that.

Originally Posted by Primernova

I think it looks pretty good but with no factions, doesn't it get confusing who you're supposed to kill?

It's pretty clear. Everything is color-coded, so if you're Blue, you have to kill the Red guys and the other way around. In WvWvW it can get a little less clear, but never to the point of being confusing. It's not harder to see than Team Fortress 2.

Retired Holy PriestAs a rule, I try to act on the internet as I would in real life. If I have offended you, feel free to point it out. Unless I meant to offend you, I will probably apologize.